In light of the OEWeek article series from our European colleagues on the Challenges of Sharing I am dreaming some folks will overcome their challenges and share any kind of highlights resources from events they participated in.
An absolute highlight last week was a session Designing With, Not Around, Disabled Learners: A Screen-Reader Demo Experience and Equity Unbound webinar led by Yasser Tamer, Assistant Program Manager for Equity Unbound and disability advocate.
This session from Equity Unbound will demonstrate why screen-reader access is important when designing learning materials, especially Open Educational Resources. Have you ever wanted to know how people who are visually impaired or totally blind access your content? Come to this session and I, a visually impaired screen-reader user and an accessibility expert myself, will demonstrate for you the experience of a blind person navigating websites and digital materials.
I was so excited when Yasser submitted this event for OEWeek! I was fortunate to record a podcast conversation with him after his 2023 Open Award for Excellence as a student and even then I was planting a seed as I wished for this kind of session.
My own practice for creating more accessibile online materials has included a commitment to using alt descriptions for text, including transcripts for audio, using accessibility checkers, all the things many open educators do. But I really did not have an appreciation for what it is like to navigate web pages that I can do easily with vision, for people like Yasser who rely on a screen reader.
If you listen to the recording below, you might feel the same bit of shock at what its like just to read web pages with that relentless computer voice announcing page elements.
There was much more to the session! Yasser provided insight into the challenges of making PDFs accessible, a caution to not just rely on a single accessibility check. Participants shared much of their experience and efforts on accessibility.
And a great find from Suzanne in the chat was her describing volunteering with Be My Eyes a service for providing those with visual challenges someone they can reach out to for dealing with every day tasks.
I encourage you to give the recording a view and also to see the slides and activities that Yasser shared.
It would be wonderful if more folks could share enevn something as a simple useful web site they heard this week.